@Cassiodorus Thanks for the videos. Luckily, I have no plans other than a cooking project this afternoon, so I have plenty of time to view them.
I am about 1/3 through the article you linked. It will help us understand the current crisis of whether or not there exists a judicial restraint on a President.
About Bernie. Bleh!
Enjoy your weekend, friend!

They are no longer interested in the West.

Good job, diplomats. Here it must be remembered that Trump is the product of the Dems' punch-left strategy.

As for the Sanders rallies, well, you don't have to watch this video for long to get it:

So what do you do when you live in a country that acts like it deserves to die, and is busy dying as you speak?

@QMS I do not recall a dust up when Biden revoked Trump's security clearance, but whatever Trump does seems to make the headlines the world over.
If I understand it correctly, access to high security info gives the former officials the ability to offer advice.
Everyone who wants Hillary's advice, please raise your hands.
I love my new room! The interior will be painted by Monday, the wood flooring will be laid Tuesday. I have a desk ready to be moved into it, and have art from Africa, S. America, and Asia to decorate the walls. Crazies are not allowed to enter! I meant for it to be my escape from the crazies I work for and work with, Monday through Friday, year after year. The beauty of the setting sun is icing on the cake.
I am going to cook turnip greens and cornbread today. The young lady cashier at the grocery store had never seen a turnip and asked management to identify the thing. She must not have spent time with her g'mas.
Have a great weekend, my dear friend!

Cheers and beers your way!

Funny headline on the trumpet revoking security clearance
for Harris, Hillary and a few others last night. Payback time.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/trump-pulls-security-clearances-ka...

@Lookout Wow, 31 Deg. would discourage me from trading much more than a pair of work gloves for wool gloves! It got down into the high 30s the last two nights, but we have temps in the mid-80s coming next week.
It is perfect today for burning, but Dear One is too busy to stand and manage the fire for hours. Sigh...

I got very lucky on Thursday. The District Attorney and his staff have limited time, limited resources. They move forward on what they consider important cases, such as murders, sexual assaults, etc...My client's drug charge was close to being important, but when I disclosed his tragic life story, and the fact that he had put himself into a 1 yr lock down drug rehab center, the prosecutor figured he was on the right track without the State mandating it, and let him go, wished him all the best.
I cannot count how many drug addicts I have represented that got into drugs with parental assistance. Nothing says loving mother more than sharing coke with her son, amirite?
I am going to watch a video on how to re-calibrate an oven, make sure it is properly set before the cornbread goes in!
Enjoy your weekend, my dear friend!

Congrats on the new room with lovely views, and the courtroom successes!

We burnt three piles down by the pond that have been there for a couple of years with annual additions. It was a sunny still day, but cool....perfect for burning. When I checked them late yesterday all three piles were just warm ash. The pond is lovely with redbuds blooming all around. I'll get a picture today and post it later.

Trade day was also chilly this AM. Here in the holler it was 42F, but Trade day was 31F. So traders were thin and I didn't buy a thing. However did catch up with some friends, and heard one of our buddies has COVID. Fortunately he is on the mend.

Well, I hope everyone has a great weekend, and thanks for the OT!

@snoopydawg The Judge's article is excellent. I hope everyone reads it.
I hadn't read about the Mexican family unable to get to the Medical Center for the child's cancer treatment. This is just not what closing the borders is meant to do.
I am appalled that the woman dr. from Peru, married to an American, has been held in detention, possibly already deported.
What I have hoped for was to process people at the borders for legal entry. I have hoped for decades that corporations hiring cheap labor migrants would be prosecuted for violating laws that are right there in the statutes and penal codes. Jobs should be available to citizens at un-suppressed wages.
Criminals from any country, no matter what their race or skin color might be, should not be allowed entry or slip in through obvious cracks in the "wall"..
There are 3 illegals, gang members, awaiting trial for capital murder, in jails in 2 adjacent counties. One of them had been deported 4 times, but managed to slip back in to commit multiple murders.
The crips, bloods, Banditos,and Hell's Angels are just wussies compared to the foreign gangs.
The response should be rational and responsible, not for political gains.
I hope my client is being properly entertained, chica!
Have a great weekend!

.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/20/perilous-times-in-us-for-freedom/

Americans should read the constitution and see what it actually says.

Biden allowed lots of immigrants into the country and they were working their way through the court system. Trump just canceled over 500,000 TPS and now he can deport them to wherever he wants.

Will he do that to the white Ukrainian refugees too? Will anyone get upset if he does?

A family from Mexico who has a 10 year old daughter getting treatment in Texas for brain cancer had been allowed to travel for treatment many times, but not the last time. If the kids would have stayed they would have been put into our deplorable system.

@enhydra lutris information. A government of, by, and for the people should not consider the people too stupid to be truthfully informed. You'd think the spy agencies are scared of us, wouldn't you? Hmmm...
I, too, believe security clearances are a job requirement. Period. Any official that gets fired or replaced is an official with no government job. These are not the go-to people for opinions and strategy for those on the job.
The meme that the CIA doesn't want to be embarrassed is pretty lame. Like, they are embarrassed for planning JFKs murder, but had no issues being revealed for having failed to assassinate Castro 5 times. Gawd, they want us to see how inept they are, but no bragging rights when they hit a grand slam.
The CIA should be disbanded. I think the FBI should be reduced in size and importance.
Possums at night are pretty cool. If they are out in daylight, assume rabies and take proper measures.
I don't see a mobilization of the majority of us banding together on much of anything anymore. Maybe wehn citizens start getting deported or imprisoned for being anti-Zionists might do it.
Have a great weekend, and some nocturnal possum fun, dear friend!

now we have been visited during the night by an opossum, which we find to be very cool.

Gnus headline that isn't remotely news from the Guardian:

Politics have changed but the Democrats haven't - they are old and out of touch

Yeah, oh so true, but not really news at all.

Al Sharpton of all people opined that

In these dark times Americans must harness the power of the civil rights movement again

, my first reaction is "good luck with that" Lost in the mists of time, even though it was really only yesterday is the fact that the civil rights movement, related fights for civil liberties and basic human rights and the like were minority movements. The vast mass of the populace was non on board with those movements and, when it iss their personal ass on the line, it is unlikely that the mass of the population will get involved with any new one.

For much of the period since Trump was elected, much has been made of his "revenge" actions in the media. Cap'n Q linked to a not atypical article above. We should support and encourage much of this behavior and try to inform the public and th president of its merits and the need for its extension. To paraphrase a statement attributed to Trump It is no longer in the National interest for these people to have these clearances. Well Duh. Whythehell did Kamala ever have one anyway. Hillary should have been fired and had hers revoked for tons of malfeasance.

First, we really need to declassify mountains of stuff and stop classifying so much. We also should make a crime, with no sttute of limitations to classify certain kinds of things, like CYA stuff, stuff which was hidden because its release would embarass the government or some agency or person, stuff which was classified simply to prevent the use in court of information on government negligence and/or malfeasance, and much more, but beyond that --

If somebody has a job which requires access to certaub kegitimate sekrets, they should have such a clearance or lose said job, well and good. For them to have such a clearance which is needed for them to do their job for the government or its agent(s) is In.The. National. Interest. Once they no longer have said job, they no longer have a need for such clearance and it is therefore no longer In.Yhr.National.Interest for them to have said clearance. The larger the pool of people with access to any sekret, the larger the probability of a breach. Loss of that kind of clearance should be automatic upon separation form government service. This is, in fact, the case for a great many such clearances. It seems not to be the case for purely political grants of access, grants of access to political appointees and politicians, but there is clearly no justification for them to have it. Ex-presidents are, in reality, nobody and need no such clearance. Even so Ex-political appointees. And mere political candidates shouldn't get one in the first place. Kamala? WTF?

/rant

be well and have a good one

@soryang others very wrong. I read her puff pieces in monthly fashion sort of magazines.
At least she figured out Zionism.

...you never heard of. Or maybe you have. My focus was always world history. I only took the minimum required American history courses because thanks to my primary and high school education it bored me to death. American history is in large part censored and pasteurized. I think it would require a life long effort, say along the lines of a Howard Zinn, to expose it's true nature.

So case in point, I find out about Dorothy Thompson, a prominent American journalist of yesteryear, in a neo-liberal, New Zealand, Sinology journal I've been reading from a contrarian perspective. The journal's literary and historical references, true, it's spin, not necessarily so.

Dorothy Thompson who was famous in the 30s and 40s, as a foreign correspondent and commentator, essentially was disappeared in the 1950s for her critique of Zionism, when she became infamous and taboo. Her story is remarkable. If I had known of Dorothy Thomson as a young person, it may have been a life changing influence. As it was, I was oriented by upbringing by the WWII generation, and the subsequent cold war, Korea and Vietnam conflicts, which almost entirely dominated my cold war political outlook, so that my attitude toward middle east politics was largely stereotypical, characterized by movies such as Lawrence of Arabia, and Exodus, and the "evil" soviet client states in the mideast.

In any case, living in NY, I understood from a very young age, critical discussion of Israel was off limits.

Here's a thumbnail video trailer (5 min)- (notice the number of views):

The Silencing of Dorothy Thompson Trailer

Here's a longer historical treatment below, almost an hour, if you don't have the time, start at nine minutes, 22 minutes, 38 minutes (her turn against Zionism) or just go to the punch line and Thompson's prophetic warnings at 40:49 and 45:00.

Dorothy Thompson's Journey to and from Zionism

South Korea

Suspended prime minister Han Deok-soo's impeachment judgement will be scheduled Monday (notice) as I understand the Constitutional Court's schedule at this point. The CC has broken its promise to give priority to the impeachment judgement on suspended President Yoon. April 17 is a drop dead date for adjudication announcement because two justices' (liberal ones) terms expire then. This eventuality would throw South Korea's governance into chaos. In the same fashion, a rejection of Yoon's impeachment by the Court before that would also throw South Korea into chaos. The democratic party Assembly member who predicted the 12.3 martial law coup by Yoon and his cabal last August makes this prediction and I think it's credible. The timing couldn't be worse. Han Deok-soo said he opposed the martial law declaration by Yoon, yet in his role as acting president, after the impeachment resolution by the National Assembly, he obstructed the filling of Constitutional Court vacancies, and he had to be impeached as well to get him out of the way.

Enjoyed my visit to the VA clinic yesterday. Talked to some old timers, one of whom was a surviving Korean war vet. He told me, he had almost been killed dozens of times. I was declared healthy by the nurse, based on bp, heart rate, and oxygen levels, and talked to my old friend the urologist, who told me he's going to retire.

I was exhausted by the time I got home, perhaps it was the cold and wind.

Thanks for the OT, Onthecusp. Someone from our extended clan had important historical ties to Texas and San Antonio before my immediate forebears time. I was stationed at terrible Fort Hood for a while. What a dry, hot, miserable place that was. Well, at least there were no floods.